NY - After refraining from backing anyone in the Democratic
primary, The New York Times is endorsing Kenneth Thompson in the Brooklyn
District Attorney’s race, just weeks after sitting DA Charles Hynes announced
that he was getting back into the race on the Republican party line.
In issuing its endorsement, THE NEW YORK TIMES calls Thompson “smart,” and says his record “has shown
a passion for combating crime and injustice.”
“He pledges to bring in experienced advisers to review
office operations,” says The Times. “He says he will strengthen prosecution of
gun crimes, weed out abusive stop-and-frisk arrests, see to the completion an
inquiry into a discredited detective’s old cases, and build on Mr. Hynes’s
programs for offenders and victims. We recommend Mr. Thompson, trusting he will
follow through on that sound agenda.”
But editors are also quickly to point out that Thompson is
“not an ideal successor.”
“He lacks significant managerial experience, and we were not
reassured by his publicity-oriented approach to representing Nafissatou Diallo,
the hotel housekeeper who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn,” cautions The Times.
On Hynes, editors openly credit him for a number of
successes over the course of his 24-year run, but say that his negatives now
outweigh his positives.
“Mr. Hynes has had an important role in developing drug
treatment programs and other cost-effective alternatives to incarceration as
well as programs to help domestic violence victims and former inmates
re-entering society,” states The Times. “But these parts of his record are
overshadowed by charges of political favoritism in his handling of child
sex-abuse allegations in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, his loyalty to
tarnished deputies and reports that his office relied on discredited witnessess
to wrongly convict defendants in a string of cases.
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